CENTERFORCE ANNUAL SUMMIT

             


Oct 6-7, 2008, Sonoma, CA

The Centerforce mission is to support, educate, and advocate for individuals, families, and communities impacted by incarceration.



HIGHLIGHTS



Matthew Cate, Sec. CDCR (CA Dept Corrections & Rehabilitation

• 50% of those exiting prison have no knowledge of where spending their first night.
• Overcrowding, and lack of resources will worsen due to fiscal crisis.
• "Lifers" have proved invaluable in calming the angry "25 year old

Ann Adalist Estrin (National Resource Center on Children & Families)

• The pain from incarceration remains for a lifetime. (Need for support groups)
• Children (in silence) mourn for their dad. ("Toxic stress"). Both need to feel "held in mind"
  
• Public Awareness Campaigns exist to expose the "broken" criminal justice system and a call for a response     
• 
  

Eric Bode, Tami Reed (Chowchilla Family Express)

• Bus from major cities in CA to the two largest women prisons in America. Leaves from LA at 4am and returns the next day at 9pm. Supplies food, housing, family photos, teddy bears, and counseling. Links the families together

       
Mike Farrell, Dan Abrahamson, Elizabeth Gaynes – Sentencing reform

• Paroles are essentially unavailable despite eligibility and warden approval. Sentencing from 5 to life, 10 to life, etc will never get out.
  
• More and more prisoners are being transferred out-of-State, guaranteeing family disintergration
• 
  
  85% of the married will be divorced at time of release. (98% of the incarcerated women)
  
  

Angela Irvine, PhD   Planning for Re-entry and Recidivism Prevention 

• Best judges for what's needed are the "clients" themselves. Too often bureaucrats make the decisions
  

• Jobs first, housing second, and diversionary programs a distant third
  
• Success best fulfilled with "exit strategy", life skills and literacy training (rather than focus on academics), health and dental care
• 
  
  Watch vocabulary reaffirming human dignity. Don't identify as "felon', "offender" and "inmate".
  
  
  
  
  Question from the audience: "How do Americans sleep at night?" 
• Answer: They are unconscious, and must be awakened to the exponential crisis. In truth we are all interconnected, and what has happened to the families in our neighborhood, and at our church might well happen to us tomorrow
  
  
  Churches are a solution to the "conspiracy of silence" in making the invisible visible. Their practices of redemption, transformed hearts, and restoration, are to be acted upon. Church leaders are to lead the way from the pulpit and being in the front line

Matt Gray (Sacramento Lobbyist for Prison Reform). Has been on both sides: A victim of violent crime and a family member of an inmate.

• State bills in contrast to federal bills have no pork
  
• Legislators spend 50% of their time in Sacto fundraising
  
• Legislators must tow the party line or suffer the consequences from within
• 
  
  Meeting with members: Eyeball to eyeball, two minute maximum, (no stories), seek common ground (never argumentive), be totally humble, provide single page handouts for staff, offer solutions, and make self available for additional help, and thank them for their courtesy
• 
  
  Current bills 6 and 9 are horrific. The will insure every lifer eligible for parole will never get out, nor will it be possible to reverse or modify them in the future

Yearly awards

• Robert Ayers. Present warden at San Quentin. Acts to lower recidivism with multiple innovative programs. His advice to the audience, "KEEP UP YOUR ENERGY".
  
• 
  
  
  Phillip Seiler's mother. Worked for her sons release from 20 years on death row at San Quentin and despite the Governor's veto of the Paroles Commission granting his release, sued the present Governor and won. 
  
  

Socratic Forum (Ron Clement moderator)

• Sasha Abrimsky (American Furies, Crime, Punishment, and Vengence in the Age of Mass Imprisonment). Collapse, the current status of our economic system. Tensions are and will be extremely high. Crime will increase sharply as the unemployment rate will reach towards 25%. It is urgent we fund mental health and drug addiction programs. Jobs and housing are the basic needs. The foreclosure on houses will make the feds landlords for public housing. Legalizing marijuana will be a win win step. The taxes secured will release lots of money to the government.
• 
  
• David Shaw (CA Inspector General). Probation will assume much of the role currently played by the DA's. Present facilities overcrowding demand we must rethink how best to manage our offenders. Seeking alternatives will be the job of Probation

• Paul Wright (Editor: Prison Legal News, Author: The Celling of America. Himself in prison for 17 years.) The experts for reform are the voices of the prisoners. Decriminalizing is critical.
• 
  
• Richard Word. (Police Chief, Vacaville, CA) Too few dollars, too few staff. Must reprioritize. Redeploy staff from traffic supervision to dealing with serious crime. Start "values" programs in grade schools.
• Pam Douglas. (Community stakeholder). Leave the low level drug offender to the local community for "restorative justice" (restoration to the victim, and redress). Save money by ridding unnecessary funding, illegals.
• 
  
• Phillip Seiler. (Releasee, and apprentice plumber). Vocational unions care more for fulfilling the job than one's past record. The hiree must receive help in obtaining the tools to start his trade. Above all, provide "life skills training" to youth mainly from those "experts" who were inmates themselves
• 
  
• David Warren. (Representative. Taxpayors for Improving Public Safety). Literacy is basic. When one can't get a job, he becomes vulnerable to escape with drugs. Give the youngsters "hope".
  
• 
  
  
  Rod Clement (Moderator and Advisor to foundations). Consortiums are basic to find their common ground to improve the criminal justice system and decrease recidivism.
  
  
  
  
  Comments from audience. Implement Restorative Justice for all juvenile offenders. Restore families in crisis. We are all part of one body.

Funding

• Study the foundation websites, their interests, and guidelines
• Speak to their agents and tell of your work, its basis, like work being done, collaborative parties, outcomes, and how to measure success
• Grants are given only to the passionate

26033 Mesa Drive, Carmel, CA 93923, william_ziering@comcast.net

TOTAL TRANSFORMATION

Power In Prison Michael G. Santos 09.24.08

My prison term began in 1987, when I was 23. Although I did not have a history of violence or previous confinement, the bad decisions I made as a young man persuaded a judge to impose a 45-year term. The long sentence induced administrators to lock me inside the impregnable walls of a maximum-security federal penitentiary.

I remain in prison. It is chaotic world of violence, of hopelessness, of despair. It is an environment ripe for me to study power at a primal level.

Administrators control the infrastructure. Their rules rip away a prisoner's identity and replace it with a registration number. Staff members issue every prisoner identical coarse and threadbare clothing from bins. Rules dictate what, when and how much we eat. Guards tell us where to sleep and with whom.

We work jobs according to the needs of the institution rather than according to merit or aptitude. Different rules determine when and how we can communicate with family; meaningful interactions with members of society are blocked. Instead of encouraging men to earn freedom, prison policies are designed to make it clear that inmates have no control over their destinies. Only the turning of the calendar page matters.

In prison, preservation of the institution trumps the needs of the individual. Unlike any other place in America I know, prison administrators rely on the threat of punishment and coercion rather than the promise of incentives to manage inmates. People who seek power inside prison walls learn to manipulate this environment. Yet as recidivism rates show, those who learn to live in prison simultaneously learn to fail in society.

Without hope, men adjust in a myriad of ways to ease their time. They join gangs. They hustle contraband. They ceaselessly plot and scheme. They threaten. Most power in prison is based on fear, on the risk of bloodshed. Through intimidation and violence, some prisoners satisfy their lust for dominance and find immediate gratification.

Preparing for success upon release, on the other hand, requires a far different effort. Rewards do not come for years, even decades. Whereas administrators appease the gang leaders with single-man cells and work schedules, the inmate who focuses on preparing himself for life outside prison toils away quietly in obscurity, motivated completely from within and susceptible to predators and extortionists. As Lion, a gang leader I wrote about in my book, Inside, told me, all a man needed to thrive in prison is hatred and a knife.

Myopic prisoners think they can enhance their power by joining gangs or engaging in high-risk, low-reward behavior. And, indeed, in an institution founded upon skewed values, it is easy enough for prisoners to lift their stature--at least inside the penitentiary. Neither administrators nor the prison populace respect the man who educates himself or prepares for a law-abiding life upon release. But those who cultivate reputations of worthlessness, lethal violence and treachery build armies of sycophants.

Early in my term, a gang leader who called himself Gaspipe outlined the path to power. "It's simple," Gaspipe said. "I give respect and I demand respect. Any man who even thinks about testing me had better be ready to bleed. I'm ready to go. I know my brothers have my back."

To embrace Gaspipe's premise, prisoners have to believe that life offers nothing beyond the concrete blocks and steel that confine them. They are content with extortion, reaping windfall profits in the underground economy and dispensing their booty to a coterie of followers. They build an elusive, penitentiary power.

As a long-term prisoner with more than a quarter-century to serve, I rejected this penitentiary protocol, this institutionalized power. From the beginning, I strove to create something different. Real power, I was convinced, comes to those who build a deeper meaning in their lives; true power comes from self-mastery. As I learned from the ancient writings of Aristotle, even prisoners needed to put forth an effort to know themselves.

With plenty of time for introspection, I concluded that I didn't have the spiritual temperament of a monk. I knew I could endure the lengthy sentence imposed upon me, but I found that I could not enjoy fulfillment in a life of solitude. I had to connect with the wider community beyond the prison walls.

To triumph over the sentence, I knew I had to emerge successfully. As Stephen Covey's books taught, I had to begin serving my term with the end in mind.

Under the sentencing scheme in use when I was convicted, I knew that the possibility of good-time credit could mean my release in just over 26 years--in 2013. In 1987, that was longer than I had been alive. But instead of dwelling on the impossible amount of time until my release, I envisioned myself emerging from prison with dignity, a proud and virtuous man.

I had been a mediocre student through my school years. Mediocrity, I knew, would not be acceptable if I was going to excel in prison. By his very nature, a prisoner is inferior and a failure. To succeed, I would have to do far better than average. My goal was to have law-abiding citizens accept me as something more than a prisoner; I hoped they would consider me a peer. I hoped to learn and to create opportunities through mentors. Those opportunities would allow me to transition into society as a fully functioning and contributing citizen upon my release.

A gang leader would build his power base by orchestrating illicit schemes. I identified such behavior as offering high risks with low rewards. A lazy prisoner would sleep excessively and narcotize himself with television. That was low-risk, low-reward behavior.

I sought to empower myself with low-risk, high-reward behaviors. I educated myself, developed a network of support and strove to increase my mental, physical, spiritual and emotional fitness.

Occasionally, I took higher levels of risk, but only for commensurate rewards. For example, my writings have exposed me to the enmity of the system by revealing what I have observed and experienced.

Now I have more than 21 years of confinement behind me, and fewer than five years of prison ahead. My moral compass has guided me through prisons of every security level and has empowered me in ways that allowed me to transcend prison boundaries.

Over the last two decades, I have moved from high-security penitentiaries to minimum-security prison camps. I have earned an undergraduate degree from Mercer University and a graduate degree from Hofstra University. I have built a thriving network of support, and married an extraordinary woman whose beauty takes my breath away.

Publishers have brought books I have written to market and they educate readers across the world about America's prison system. Partners have built and continue to maintain MichaelSantos.net, a Web site that distributes my writings to help those struggling through the criminal justice system.

I have contributed to society while serving a 45-year prison sentence. That is empowering.

Michael Santos is the author of Inside: Life Behind Bars in America. He writes about the prison experience at www.MichaelSantos.net.

REASON ENOUGH FOR A PRISON MINISTRY

FORBES MAGAZINE September 24, 2008

My prison term began in 1987, when I was 23. Although I did not have a history of violence or previous confinement, the bad decisions I made as a young man persuaded a judge to impose a 45-year term. The long sentence induced administrators to lock me inside the impregnable walls of a maximum-security federal penitentiary.

I remain in prison. It is chaotic world of violence, of hopelessness, of despair. It is an environment ripe for me to study power at a primal level.

Administrators control the infrastructure. Their rules rip away a prisoner's identity and replace it with a registration number. Staff members issue every prisoner identical coarse and threadbare clothing from bins. Rules dictate what, when and how much we eat. Guards tell us where to sleep and with whom.

We work jobs according to the needs of the institution rather than according to merit or aptitude. Different rules determine when and how we can communicate with family; meaningful interactions with members of society are blocked. Instead of encouraging men to earn freedom, prison policies are designed to make it clear that inmates have no control over their destinies. Only the turning of the calendar page matters.

In prison, preservation of the institution trumps the needs of the individual. Unlike any other place in America I know, prison administrators rely on the threat of punishment and coercion rather than the promise of incentives to manage inmates. People who seek power inside prison walls learn to manipulate this environment. Yet as recidivism rates show, those who learn to live in prison simultaneously learn to fail in society.

Without hope, men adjust in a myriad of ways to ease their time. They join gangs. They hustle contraband. They ceaselessly plot and scheme. They threaten. Most power in prison is based on fear, on the risk of bloodshed. Through intimidation and violence, some prisoners satisfy their lust for dominance and find immediate gratification.

Preparing for success upon release, on the other hand, requires a far different effort. Rewards do not come for years, even decades. Whereas administrators appease the gang leaders with single-man cells and work schedules, the inmate who focuses on preparing himself for life outside prison toils away quietly in obscurity, motivated completely from within and susceptible to predators and extortionists. As Lion, a gang leader I wrote about in my book, Inside, told me, all a man needed to thrive in prison is hatred and a knife.

Myopic prisoners think they can enhance their power by joining gangs or engaging in high-risk, low-reward behavior. And, indeed, in an institution founded upon skewed values, it is easy enough for prisoners to lift their stature--at least inside the penitentiary. Neither administrators nor the prison populace respect the man who educates himself or prepares for a law-abiding life upon release. But those who cultivate reputations of worthlessness, lethal violence and treachery build armies of sycophants.

Early in my term, a gang leader who called himself Gaspipe outlined the path to power. "It's simple," Gaspipe said. "I give respect and I demand respect. Any man who even thinks about testing me had better be ready to bleed. I'm ready to go. I know my brothers have my back."

To embrace Gaspipe's premise, prisoners have to believe that life offers nothing beyond the concrete blocks and steel that confine them. They are content with extortion, reaping windfall profits in the underground economy and dispensing their booty to a coterie of followers. They build an elusive, penitentiary power.

As a long-term prisoner with more than a quarter-century to serve, I rejected this penitentiary protocol, this institutionalized power. From the beginning, I strove to create something different. Real power, I was convinced, comes to those who build a deeper meaning in their lives; true power comes from self-mastery. As I learned from the ancient writings of Aristotle, even prisoners needed to put forth an effort to know themselves.

With plenty of time for introspection, I concluded that I didn't have the spiritual temperament of a monk. I knew I could endure the lengthy sentence imposed upon me, but I found that I could not enjoy fulfillment in a life of solitude. I had to connect with the wider community beyond the prison walls.

To triumph over the sentence, I knew I had to emerge successfully. As Stephen Covey's books taught, I had to begin serving my term with the end in mind.

Under the sentencing scheme in use when I was convicted, I knew that the possibility of good-time credit could mean my release in just over 26 years--in 2013. In 1987, that was longer than I had been alive. But instead of dwelling on the impossible amount of time until my release, I envisioned myself emerging from prison with dignity, a proud and virtuous man.

I had been a mediocre student through my school years. Mediocrity, I knew, would not be acceptable if I was going to excel in prison. By his very nature, a prisoner is inferior and a failure. To succeed, I would have to do far better than average. My goal was to have law-abiding citizens accept me as something more than a prisoner; I hoped they would consider me a peer. I hoped to learn and to create opportunities through mentors. Those opportunities would allow me to transition into society as a fully functioning and contributing citizen upon my release.

A gang leader would build his power base by orchestrating illicit schemes. I identified such behavior as offering high risks with low rewards. A lazy prisoner would sleep excessively and narcotize himself with television. That was low-risk, low-reward behavior.

I sought to empower myself with low-risk, high-reward behaviors. I educated myself, developed a network of support and strove to increase my mental, physical, spiritual and emotional fitness.

Occasionally, I took higher levels of risk, but only for commensurate rewards. For example, my writings have exposed me to the enmity of the system by revealing what I have observed and experienced.

Now I have more than 21 years of confinement behind me, and fewer than five years of prison ahead. My moral compass has guided me through prisons of every security level and has empowered me in ways that allowed me to transcend prison boundaries.

Over the last two decades, I have moved from high-security penitentiaries to minimum-security prison camps. I have earned an undergraduate degree from Mercer University and a graduate degree from Hofstra University. I have built a thriving network of support, and married an extraordinary woman whose beauty takes my breath away.

Publishers have brought books I have written to market and they educate readers across the world about America's prison system. Partners have built and continue to maintain MichaelSantos.net, a Web site that distributes my writings to help those struggling through the criminal justice system.

I have contributed to society while serving a 45-year prison sentence. That is empowering.

Michael Santos is the author of Inside: Life Behind Bars in America. He writes about the prison experience at www.MichaelSantos.net.